


Time

by Lola_di_Penates



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: 75th Hunger Games, Angst, F/M, Hunger Games Tributes, Hurt/Comfort, POV Peeta Mellark, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quarter Quell (Hunger Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26107030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola_di_Penates/pseuds/Lola_di_Penates
Summary: That is how it always feels with Katniss. She never makes you do anything, never forces your hand. But you'd go to the end of the fucking Panem for the beautiful creature that lies on the bed, and she wouldn't have to lift a finger in return.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> Catching Fire: The night before the beginning of the Quarter Quell.

"Stay," she says.

It isn't so much of a command, but you feel compelled to do it, anyway. That is how it always feels with Katniss. She never _makes_ you do anything, never _forces_ your hand. But you'd go to the end of the fucking Panem for the beautiful creature that lies on the bed, and she wouldn't have to lift a finger in return.

The room is a cool, steel tone. It is imposing as it is majestic, and like everything else that exists in the realm of the Capitol, completely futuristic. It contrasts, with terrible irony, against the age-old feelings of anticipation and fear that twinge in your chest on the night before the beginning of the end. In the centre of its horrible newness, lies someone whose soul has been destined to walk to earth with yours since the very beginning of your time.

(Or at least that's how it feels to you).

It really is grossly unfair, the way your mind works. It never ceases to replay the moments of absolute bliss, in the midst of such suffering, that you share with someone who will never be yours. You suppose that everyone who lives in a district ruled by the Capitol is destined to suffer in some way. This is your punishment, your atonement. In your opinion, this penance is far worse than any Games you can be cast into. In some ways, it's so intertwined with the Games themselves that the two are inextricable. But at the same time, the complicated way you feel for her is so separate, so independent of the killing that is about to unfold. The killing that has unfolded for decades before you. The shared history of desperation, of abandonment (of District 12 in general, in a way) sparks a hunger so different from the one that you envisage most tributes feel. 

After all, most tributes seek self-preservation, not self-sacrifice.

It is trivial, you suppose, that you are so preoccupied with pains of the heart when twenty-three other people at this very moment are considering the reality that they might not live another twenty-four hours, despite all having successfully won a Games. But there are things worse than death. You resigned yourself to your fate the minute you heard Effie Trinket call out your name at the Reaping in your first Hunger Games. Anything more hopeful would have been sheer lunacy at the time. You survived that Games because of Katniss, not in spite of her. That is a favour that you never thought you could repay, until the Capitol announced the Quarter Quell.

In spite of the destroyed promises of normalcy, the renewed trauma, the mere fact of being forced to face the reality of your impending demise, listless apathy isn't really your _thing_. If the odds are never going to be in your favour, you'll sure as hell make sure you can rig them for someone else. If you can't be the winner, at least you won't be a pawn. In a sick way, you can become the Gamemaker. That's something you learn from Katniss in your first arena - forget the players, beat the game.

The ability to do that is far from simple of course. It requires the complicity of Katniss Everdeen and Katniss Everdeen is an enigma that you can never hope to fully understand. Her mind seems to operate on a system so entirely different to anyone else you have ever known. If you could wish for something, it would be for more time to comprehend it.

Time is something that you seem to forever wish for, and never seem to get. It feels like your whole life has been spent trying to grasp time with a firm hand and will it to stand still. It seems like you race against a clock ticking more rapidly with every day that passes. As all humans, your days are finite. But as the particular person that you are, chosen to lead a sick, twisted life of triumph and tragedy, the days slip by you so fast it feels like it is over before it has really had the chance to begin. 

If anything, it makes you fucking furious at yourself for how much time you wasted ignoring her after the first Games. Punishing her for failing to reciprocate the feelings that you wished she would. She never owed that to you, of course. She saved your life in more ways than one and didn’t have to give you any more than that.

Here you are, blessed with the picture of perfection in front of you, with no time left to drink it in properly. Much less the opportunity to give her a life that she deserves, or Christ, convince her that your story really is one of star-crossed lovers.

For you, it is simply a case of standing by to catch her if she falls (which you can almost guarantee that she won't, being far more capable than yourself). It is the case of sacrificing what you can to enhance her chances of success. It is a case of being there to grasp her hand in front of the Capitol and show them how beautiful life can appear to be, even in the throes of darkness.

And just for one moment, in the course of acting out your saga, it might feel as if it were all real. 

The horrible truth is that during your first Games, the Victory Tour and in the promotional material the two of you have been dragged into, you have enjoyed the show. If you are destined to die tomorrow, or within the next week, then at the very least, the Capitol gave you an opportunity to _pretend_ like you caught the uncatchable bird. In those uncertain moments, she is yours.

Away from the cameras lies your reality. It will never matter how _good_ Peeta Mellark is, or how kind or how sweet. It doesn't make a shred of a difference how many people in the Capitol adore your love story. It won't matter how many times you sacrifice yourself, how many times you offer up your flesh, your mind, your heart up on a silver platter. Everyone in this game, including Katniss Everdeen, has their own agenda and their own goal to salvage the wreckage of the districts. In a way, your role in her game is even more admirable than your own. You _must_ play your role in achieving the greater good. You must die, so she can live.

Her head rolls into your chest as you lay yourself down, gently on the bed next to her. The soft mattress seems to soak up your body as the fluffy pillows sigh into the bedhead. A delicate hand, however lethal with a bow, fumbles its way onto your chest, grasping the thin cotton of your t-shirt. You close your eyes and breathe her in.

Honestly, is there a better way to spend what very well could be your final night on earth? It is true, everything you've thought, after all. There is no one else on this earth who you care for more deeply. It is Katniss, or it is nothing, and despite the bleakness of unrequited love it feels so _right_ in this moment.

Your lips find their way to her forehead, pressing softly against it. Your left hand traces soothing circles on her arms as you feel her body slacken into yours. There are things you know she wants to say, too. But you don't need to hear them right now.

Despite the feeling of her relaxed body in your arms, her presence only seems to intensify the feelings that bubble up dangerously inside you, fighting for release. The frantic beating in your heart and the tight, _desperate_ feeling of wanting to say what you crave to, but biting it down. Although your time ticks faster still, now is not the right moment. 

Besides, you love her more than you could properly express, and she doesn’t need to be told or reminded to know it. Whether or not she reciprocates it is an entirely different matter, and you’re not sure whether you want to know the answer to it. Sometimes things are best left unsaid, particularly when the pretending has gone on for days now and it’s too easy to convince yourself that maybe, somewhere inside her, she feels it too.

Sighing deeply you kiss her forehead lightly again, and surprisingly, a small smile finds its way to the corner of your lips. Time is something that has been cruelly stolen from you, there is no denying. But you have ten, long hours stretching ahead of you in a world consisting of only Katniss and Peeta.

Ten hours isn’t nearly enough, but then again, no amount of time with her ever would be.


End file.
